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None of their business

As Progressives throw tantrums over the president’s tax-returns, we’re learning far more about them than we ever will about Donald Trump’s finances even if he were to reveal that information. And everything Progs are teaching warns us against their Satanic philosophy.

For starters, it’s clear that bitterness against a wealthy and successful man rather than any concern for the country motivates this jihad — whatever Progs pretend to the contrary. “Joe Dinkin, spokesman for the Working Families Party, one of the groups organizing the marches [against The Donald on Tax Day], said investigations into the Trump campaign’s alleged connections to Russia underscore the need to disclose his returns. ‘Without seeing his taxes, we’ll never really know who he’s working for,’ said Dinkin…” Seriously? Yo, Dimwit: if Trump is indeed collaborating with Russia, birthplace of communism and murderer of millions, wouldn’t you rejoice? Why all this manufactured angst about a president hand-in-glove with the political system you’ve tirelessly foisted on Americans?

Even scarier than their usual lies and hypocrisy, however, is Progressives’ eagerness to discard a hallowed freedom in Anglo-American law: the prohibition on attainder.

Article I, Section 9 of our Constitution bans the federal government from passing “Bill[s] of Attainder.” Historically, such “legislative acts…, without trial, condemned specifically designated persons or groups to death.” So heinous did the Founders consider attainder’s injustice that in Article 1, Section 10, they also denied the states this power — one of “only two individual liberties [the other being ex-post facto laws] that the original Constitution protects from both federal and state intrusion.”

American courts have applied these twin sections broadly, to cases beyond those involving the death penalty. In general, judges interpret the ban on attainder to “[prohibit] all legislative acts, ‘no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial … .’” So strong is the taboo against targeting individuals that we almost never encounter this species of tyranny; consequently, we may not fully appreciate our liberation. But suppose Bob Livingston’s last column offended a politician or bureaucrat or one of their cronies or relatives. The injured party may not sponsor, nor may any legislature pass, a law that decrees, “Bob Livingston is barred from hosting a website hereafter.” Even rephrasing the vengeance without specifically naming Bob — “No older, white guys with a strong interest in health and politics may host a website hereafter on either or both subjects” — doesn’t turn it kosher.

But who cares about such niceties when The Donald needs savaging? Accordingly, three politicians from the Progressive paradise of New York City have abandoned all scruples against attainder. Two of them have already proposed legislation that aims squarely at Trump and Trump alone while the third has proudly proclaimed his vendetta.

Nothing spreads a bad idea faster than Progressivism. And so, “[s]ince I introduced the TRUMP Act,” Hitman boasts, “legislators in five other states … have already introduced a version of my bill. And legislators in another eight … have made commitments to do so soon.”

Apparently Hitman’s hit wasn’t biased enough for another Dimocratic despot, this one on New York City’s council (or, more likely, he craved the publicity showered on Hitman). Ergo, Corey Johnson announced earlier this month his “plans to introduce legislation that would require a very specific subset of vendors with contracts for city concessions to turn over the ‘personal tax returns of any individual named in the entity.’ How specific is it? It only applies to one vendor: …the massively expensive municipal golf course in the Bronx that Trump’s company now runs.”

No political atrocity in New York is complete without New York City’s nanny — sorry, mayor — sorry, Comrade Bill De Blasio’s input. And so His Dishonor threatened, “We’re gonna look at everything we have in terms of his business dealings with the City of New York or anything we regulate. … I don’t know of an exact way but it has to be looked at by us and by the other cities and states where he has businesses because it’s really beyond the pale.”

If Progs can so unconstitutionally abuse the president, how safe are the rest of us?

Otherwise, Trump’s travails wouldn’t worry us: we should cheer any time the political class eats its own. Sensible serfs never waste sympathy on their overlords. Indeed, let’s make gaining and holding office as loathsome as possible; hopefully, more candidates will conclude that lording it over us isn’t worth the hassle. And if such scum as Hitlary Clinton or George “How-Far-I-Went-on-Daddy’s-Name” Bush choose to grovel for our vote by voluntarily divulging their finances, sit back and enjoy the show.

But Trump refused to play that game in a refreshing display of self-respect. Now let him quit hiding behind lame excuses of IRS audits and instead declare, “My finances are none of your business. Furthermore, let’s abolish the IRS: no one, least of all corrupt bureaucrats, has any right to know how much we earn, let alone steal a huge percentage of it.”

As a bonus, Progressives’ heads will likely explode.

— Becky Akers

Becky Akers is a free-lance writer and historian who publishes so voluminously that whole forests of gigabytes have died. You’ve heard of some of the publications that carry her work (Personal Liberty Digest, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Barron’s, New York Post); others can only wish you’d heard of them. She’s also written two novels of the American Revolution, Halestorm and Abducting Arnold. They advocate sedition and liberty, among other joys, so the wise reader will buy them now, before they’re banned.